


In The Tomb Of The Ghost Queen

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Archaeology, Brothers, Comedy, Exploration, Gen, Grave Robbers, Historical Inaccuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 04:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: The most unorthodox way to go shopping.





	In The Tomb Of The Ghost Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely inspired by that variety show episode WayV were on!

It was the oldest trick in the book.

Quickly remove a special treasure from a weight-based booby trap with one hand and then use the other hand to replace the object with a plain old rock with a similar weight fast enough that the trap doesn’t activate and kill everyone.

Okay. It was the _ second _ oldest trick in the book.

Dong Sicheng, twenty-one years old, had performed such a maneuver approximately thirty-two times in his life in about twenty-four different tombs, caves and dungeons. He had even _ succeeded _ on about eighteen different occasions but even the other fourteen times were successes, in a way, because he had successfully evaded the activated booby traps about… 90% of the time! 

What was life without a few near-misses? 

The great tomb raiders of generations past named such a sacred move the Ole Switcheroo and Sicheng was going to do the maneuver correctly this time. He kind of needed to. His brothers were watching. “I’ve got this,” he loudly declared, sending his voice echoing throughout the small stone antechamber. “Just you watch.”

“I am watching,” his middle brother Dong Xuxi, nineteen years old, wailed. He held his hands up over his face. “Through my fingers.” The giant coward.

Their youngest brother, Dong Yanxi, stepped behind Xuxi, but not exactly out of fear. He was ten years old, thank you very much, and although his voice was still high and squeaky, his intelligence was that of a near-genius. “If the traps that activate when you fail are poisonous blow darts or launched wooden spears, they will most likely fire from that direction--” He pointed to the stone wall to their right. It was significantly rougher than all of the other walls in the chamber, which meant that the cracks and crevices in its surface would most certainly hide holes perfect for the task of hurling small but harmful objects at them in rapid succession. “--and when they fire, their projected trajectory will--” He took another step back, and then angled himself to the left a little bit. “--put both of your bodies between them and me, effectively protecting me from all harm.” 

“Hey,” Sicheng complained. “Why are you acting like I’ve failed already?” He risked taking his eyes off of what he was doing to glare over his shoulder. “I thought you trusted me?”

“Just taking the necessary precautions,” Yanxi admitted casually. He took a moment to readjust the Velcro band on one of his elbow pads and the crackling noise of it in the small space grated at Sicheng’s ears.

“I’m going to succeed.”

“But you _ could _ fail. The probability is quite high, considering your track record.”

“I’ll do it right. I’ve got my mojo going and everything.”

“Only fools run into situations while unprepared for the consequences.”

Sicheng glared at him. Sometimes he forgot that his kid brother was, well, ten years old and that climbing through centuries-old underground tombs was, well, dangerous. “Grave robbing is in our blood. I’ve got this.”

Yanxi frowned. “You know mom and dad like it best when we use the term _ priceless cultural artifact authenticators _.”

“It’s on the business cards,” Xuxi agreed.

Sicheng narrowed his eyes. Yes, he remembered now. His kid brother was still enough of a kid to wear _ light-up Skechers _ on a spelunking adventure and stomp around just to make them flash. “Keep this up and I’ll--”

“I’ll tell mom,” interrupted Yanxi, unfazed.

Xuxi peered out from between his fingers. “Can you just do the Ole Switcheroo already?”

“Fine.” Sicheng turned back around. In front of him was a beautifully carved stone column, about chest high. Inscribed on it were symbols and artistic depictions of the blood-soaked tale of the Ghost Queen and how she conquered half of ancient China with an army of magical warriors made from bone and sand before the crown that gave her her powers was snatched from her by the ferocious warlord Cao Pi. Sicheng wasn’t really into all of this for the history. He just wanted the exercise. Oh yeah and the prized jewels and gold the Ghost Queen buried herself with! Those would be nice. Her final resting place, according to Yanxi’s translations, should be on the other side of the stone door right in front of them. They just needed the key. And to get the key, he needed to do the Ole Switcheroo.

“Hurry up,” complained Yanxi. “What if you accidentally lean on it and activate the trap?”

“Aren’t you safe?” Xuxi turned to look at him. “You’re using the both of us as meat shields.”

“Don’t tell me you’re doubting your own calculations,” Sicheng hounded him.

“Just hurry,” said Yanxi. “I thought we were racing mom and dad out of the tomb system?”

“Can’t race when you’re standing still,” Xuxi added. “Well, if you’re a tortoise, you can, but… we’re… not tortoises?” He sounded confused.

“You gotta be patient with these things,” Sicheng said. Really, the Ole Switcheroo was a master’s technique. It required speed and precision and patience and steady hands and _ confidence _. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, popping the joints in his gloved fingers. His left hand held on tightly to the rock he had chosen to do the maneuver with. The key on top of the column was cylindrical in shape, and made of dark, waxed wood with grooves carved into the sides to allow it to fit into the proper keyhole and turn the lock on the door. Really, truly, Sicheng couldn’t tell how heavy it was by looking at it. He’d just eyeballed it and took four seconds to grab a fist-sized rock off the ground. “Only masters can do this.”

“Well, we’re screwed then.” The fact that it was Xuxi who said that and not Yanxi almost made Sicheng drop the rock, set off the trap and kill them all. 

“You big oaf,” Sicheng mumbled under his breath. Out of brotherly love. “Just keep your eyes covered so that you won’t know when it’s time to run, why don’t you?”

He knew he needed to get a move on, though. If he was being honest with himself, he was stalling. 

Sicheng was rarely the head of these expeditions.

Their mom was the leader. She was the one with the orders. With the plans. Using her archaeological connections, she’d flown or sailed the men in her life all across the continent, deciphering clues, solving puzzle boxes and crawling through tombs keeping priceless artifacts out of museums where they would do nothing but be severely under-appreciated and not earn anyone any money. Her quick wit, love of riddles and unrivaled archery skills had gotten them into and, more importantly, _ out of _ a ridiculous number of sticky situations. Now that Sicheng was growing old enough to lead his brothers on expeditions of their own, he was starting to succumb to the sheer weight of responsibility and decision-making such a job demanded of him. He was even discovering that his sense of direction was nowhere near as good as he’d always claimed. This stuff was hard! Hell, if any amount of Xuxi’s genes had gone to his brain as opposed to his muscles or height, Sicheng would be doing his best to fork off the ‘leader’ role to him.

“Any day now,” Yanxi snapped. He tapped his foot. Not out of impatience but to make his sneakers light up.

That was_ it _.

Sicheng reached down with his right hand, grabbed the cylindrical key and yoinked it off the pedestal. Then he put the fist-sized rock in its place, all in one smooth, uninterrupted motion.

The Ole Switcheroo in all of its glory.

“Now was that so hard,” asked Xuxi, daring to open his eyes.

“You really could have done that five minutes ago,” added Yanxi. 

“Uh oh,” said Sicheng.

Xuxi blinked. “What do you mean _ uh oh _? We haven’t been skewered by spears or flattened by a boulder yet?” He glanced up towards the ceiling just in case.

Sicheng turned around to face his brothers. He tossed the cylindrical key up into the air and then caught it with his hand. It made a meaty _ thwack! _ sound against his glove. “This is much, much heavier than it looks.”

“The rock you put on the pedestal isn’t heavy enough,” Yanxi filled in the blanks.

Xuxi pulled his hands away from his face. “Then why aren’t we dead?” He peered towards one wall and then the other. Nothing was being shot through the air at them. “Maybe the booby trap failed? It’s old, right? It probably stopped working a hundred years ago.”

“Highly doubtful,” Yanxi said. “This tomb may be a millenia old but if these great emperors and warlords knew anything during their time, it was how to protect all the money, jade, jewels and treasures they buried themselves with so that nobody else on the entire planet could benefit from their wealth and riches once they died.”

“How macabre,” Sicheng noted.

Xuxi lost his balance even though he was standing still.

“Really?” Yanxi asked. “Years of forcing open coffins and grabbing magical artifacts out of the skeletal hands of old kings but _ this _ is macabre?”

“Do you even know what that word means?” Sicheng pointed the key at him.

“Yes!” Yanxi squealed, exasperated. “Do you?”

Sicheng propped his hands on his hips, being a little careless with the key. “You’re going to have do something you’ve never done before and that’s _ be wrong _.” He waved a hand. “The booby trap didn’t work. We’re good. And alive. Let’s get to the door and rob a grave.” He spun around. 

Maybe being in the near-dark for so long with only the LED flashlights strapped to their chests as illumination was playing with Sicheng’s depth perception because the door he’d been standing right in front of a minute ago seemed ludicrously far away.

Yanxi took a step from behind Xuxi. “Macabre means that something pertains to--”

“Look now,” Sicheng interrupted, “don’t think I’m above leaving you down here alone.”

Xuxi lost his balance again. He threw out his arms to right himself. “Guys,” he grunted. “The ground is shifting.”

“It’s that big head of yours screwing up your center of gravity,” Sicheng fired at him.

“No, he’s right,” said Yanxi. “The surface we are standing on is tilting.”

Now that Sicheng took a moment to reassess his surroundings, there was now an _ angle _ to everything that hadn’t been there earlier. He lost his own balance and had to take a step backward to keep from falling over.

This wasn’t good.

Yanxi screeched and dropped to a knee as the ground continued to tilt beneath him. Fortunately, Xuxi was standing close enough to him to grab his arm to keep him from slipping further. “Sicheng,” Xuxi said, his tone a warning. “We’re going to get dumped off the cliff edge if we stay here.”

Pebbles and rocks were starting to skitter past them now. Rolling and rolling and bouncing before falling over the cliff edge behind them and disappearing into the pitch blackness of the tombs. Sicheng didn’t need to see in the dark to be sure that there was only a long and painful drop on the other end of that thing. He had to think quickly. Think think think! “Get to the pedestal,” he ordered, already crawling forward.

Yanxi climbed onto Xuxi’s back and wrapped his arms around his big brother’s neck. Xuxi got on his hands and knees and crawled towards the column of stone.

The rock from the failed Ole Switcheroo tumbled off the top of the column and would have swiped Sicheng upside the head if he hadn’t thrown an arm over his face to protect himself. “It’s still tilting.” He probably didn’t need to say something so obvious. “Come on, guys. Move it.” Despite the numbness in his arm from where the rock struck him, he kept climbing. He got one hand and then the other around the decorated column and then hauled himself up onto it. He glanced at the symbols and drawings carved into it and wondered if one of the images was a warning about this very trap. “Xuxi!”

“I’m right here,” Xuxi yelled. For a long second, Sicheng couldn’t see him, then Xuxi pulled himself up onto the column from the other side. “Give me a hand?”

Sicheng was afraid to move in case his shifting weight made the old stone collapse but this was his _ brother _. He reached out and clasped his brother’s gloved hand.

With one last heave-ho, Xuxi clambered up onto the column, Yanxi still on his back.

“Oh, if mom were here, she’d be so pissed,” Sicheng mumbled, surprisingly calm despite the chaos tumbling down around them.

“Mom?” Xuxi widened his eyes. “Dad would make us leave the dinner table without dessert tonight!”

They were technically on the column’s side, but with the angle of the tilting floor, they were standing on top of it.

“I think it stopped,” Sicheng announced.

The rocks had begun to settle again. An odd stillness was washing over them.

“No, it didn’t stop,” said Xuxi. “I can still feel the floor vibrating. I can still hear… some kind of humming?”

Yanxi unwrapped an arm from around Xuxi’s neck and put his palm against the rock. “Judging from the Ghost Queen’s apparent year of death, I think I have an idea of the level of technology used for this contraption. I’m positive it is comprised of an interlocking series of ropes, pulleys and weights. Things seem calm now but it will probably be only another minute or so before the floor continues to tilt backwards as more weight is added to the mechanism.”

“You sure you aren’t some omniscient being or something,” Xuxi had to know. “Are you reading off of a script?”

“We have to go up,” Sicheng determined. “We have to get to the top of this thing before we’re upside down.”

“What are we going to do?” Xuxi grunted as he shifted his kid brother’s weight on his back as if the little guy was just a backpack on his shoulder. “There aren’t any other columns like these to stand on.”

“Come on, bro.” Sicheng tried to laugh away his panic. “This is just like rock climbing at the gym. Except without, you know, safety equipment or padded mats at the bottom.”

“Look!” Yanxi pointed. Then he twisted a bit to better aim his flashlight. He pointed again. “There’s an outcropping of rock over there that seems wide enough for all of us to get our feet on. We can keep going up from there.”

It didn’t take a genius for anyone to notice that-- “That’s very far,” Sicheng said. He reached out with his hand but the outcropping wouldn’t be within his reach even if he jumped.

Xuxi gasped as an idea hit him. “I’ll throw you.”

Sicheng turned to look at him, eyebrows raised high. “I’m not a football.”

“You’re small enough to be one,” Xuxi said seriously.

Yanxi lowered himself from Xuxi’s back and wobbled a bit dangerously as he stretched to put his light-up shoes on the bit of stone column between Xuxi’s boots. “I’ll take this.” He grabbed the wooden key out of Sicheng’s hand. “In case you plummet to your death.”

Sicheng was pretty sure that being picked up and thrown was not a very dignified thing. “Don’t throw me.”

Xuxi was already picking him up. With his strength, lifting his older brother was near-effortless.

Sicheng let out a squawk of surprise as he was hoisted higher and higher into the air. “What if you drop me?” He squinted towards the outcropping of rock in the distance. It seemed so _ far _. “What if you miss?”

“You don’t trust me?” Xuxi questioned. Then, without warning, he threw his brother.

“What the fu--” Sicheng bit his tongue by accident as his left arm scraped over a bit of rock. He couldn’t be surprised for long. Gravity was already grabbing hold of him, threatening to yank him into the darkness. Sicheng turned his torso and stretched. _ Stretched _! His foot barely grazed the stone and then his arm was scraping over the rock again, scratching him red. “I made it!”

He heard excited clapping. “I knew shot put in high school would come in handy.” Xuxi. “Alright. I’m going to--”

Sicheng knew what his brother was going to suggest. “Don’t you dare throw Yanxi!” An idea hit him. He reached out a hand to grab the small satchel of supplies belted around his waist.

Xuxi groaned. “How else are we going to get him over there?”

“I’m already working on a plan.” Sicheng pulled a length of rope from his bag. He was thankful that he made his dad fork over the extra coil. It took some doing, but he tied the rope around a small, reaching stalagmite. He pulled on it once, twice, to check that it would remain tight. “This is going to sound and look so stupid,” Sicheng declared, “but I’m going to need you to grab my foot, Xuxi.” He gave himself a bit of slack with the rope and then leaned over the edge of the outcropping. He only knew where his brothers were because of the bit of blue glow from their flashlights. Trusting the rope, he leaned even farther over the edge and then held out his leg.

Xuxi seemed to understand without the entire plan being spelled out to him. He reached out a big hand and grabbed Sicheng by his ankle, right above his shoe. “Yanxi, crawl across. Quickly.”

“Hold on,” Yanxi squeaked.

“What, you scared?” Sicheng grinned even though he was sure his brother couldn’t see him.

“No. I’m just securing the key. Give me a second.” Yanxi actually sounded more excited than frightened. Then he eagerly began crawling up Xuxi’s back, towards his shoulder and then towards his arm.

Sicheng felt the new weight on his leg immediately. Thank goodness he spent the majority of his childhood climbing cave walls, swimming through underwater tunnels and crawling out of sand traps. He’d never skipped a leg day in his life. “One or both of you need to lose weight,” he groaned.

Yanxi continued to make his way across the bridge of his brother’s limbs. His hands kept him balanced on the rock surface as his shoes blinked obnoxiously every time he stepped on Xuxi’s arm or Sicheng’s leg. 

Sicheng winced as his arm holding the rope burned from the strain. “Hurry!”

Yanxi slipped. In the darkness, his foot completely missed Sicheng’s leg.

Sicheng’s heart skipped a beat. All he could hear was his brother’s terrified shriek. “Yanxi!” He reached out a hand, found an arm, grabbed hold.

Yanxi steadied himself and then resumed his crawl. “That was a close one,” he muttered as he wrapped an arm around Sicheng’s waist. “Thanks, bro.”

“Thanks,” Sicheng repeated. “You could’ve fallen and--” He stopped himself. Honestly, he was just thankful his bratty kid brother still had the breath to say anything. “Now how are we going to get Xuxi--”

“Alley-oop!” Xuxi yelled. And then he jumped towards them.

Sicheng didn’t have a tight enough grip on the rope. He nearly tumbled over the side himself when Xuxi grabbed hold of his arm and all of his weight sent the three brothers sideways. “Are you…” Sicheng sputtered out. “Are you kidding me? That was dangerous!” With all of his might, he pulled Xuxi towards him. “Warn me next time!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Xuxi laughed it off. He crawled over Sicheng so that he could tug his brother upright from the other direction. “Now how are we going to get farther up?”

There was a loud, low rattle from beneath them and the floor began to tilt backwards once more.

“This is mechanical?” Xuxi wondered.

“Can’t you hear the gears turning,” Sicheng asked him. He knew what to listen out for now. The _ click-click-click _ of the pulleys, the hiss of the ropes as they were pulled taut by the weights. Everything worked together to turn the entire rocky surface.

“My, my,” said Yanxi. “Our Ghost Queen sure did go through a lot of effort to defend her final resting place.”

Sicheng rolled his eyes. “I mean, she also had an entire underground maze to protect this chamber, but okay.” At least they had gotten through that with little trouble, considering how many times they had to backtrack because he was constantly losing his sense of direction. Alright so maybe they didn’t get through the maze with little trouble. Their mother would have tsked disapprovingly.

As the ground tilted more and more, a new avalanche of rocks came tumbling down. Xuxi held his big arms over Yanxi’s head to keep their kid brother safe.

Yanxi hummed thoughtfully. “I will say, though, that the Ghost Queen’s tomb has been relatively small in comparison to a few of the others we’ve gone through this year.”

It was difficult to reconcile the word ‘small’ with the three hours of cave exploration that preceded this and the two days of mountain hiking that preceded _ that _. “We’ll go left,” their father had bargained when they had left the mostly natural cave systems and reached the entirely man-made structure of the tombs. “You three take right. Whoever finds the Ghost Queen’s tomb doesn’t have to make dinner for a month.”

“Oh,” Yanxi exclaimed, bringing Sicheng’s mind back to the present moment. 

The tilting floor had stopped for another little bit, it seemed. Sicheng could distinctly hear the ancient mechanism continuing to work and spin and grind, priming more pulleys and wheels. “If we’re going to move, we need to do it while it’s not flipping.”

“This is getting ridiculously steep.” Yanxi hopped onto Xuxi’s back again, arms around his brother’s neck, legs around his brother’s waist. “I believe the angle of this slope has reached at least fifty degrees.”

Sicheng didn’t remember much about angles because screw geometry but he _ did _ know that fifty degrees was like… forty degrees away from ninety degrees and ninety degrees was straight up and down. “Jeez. If we don’t hurry, we’ll be dangling like earrings.”

Xuxi grabbed him by the waist and hoisted him up.

Sicheng smacked his arm. “Wait. Wait. Hold the phone. You’re not _ throwing me _ again.”

“It worked so well the last time,” Xuxi explained himself.

“And, really, we don’t exactly have the time to argue or deliberate.” Yanxi was all business.

“Where are you even throwing me this time?” Sicheng attempted to wriggle his way out of his brother’s arms but Xuxi was all muscle. Next thing Sicheng knew, Xuxi had him sitting on his shoulder like he was but a child. “Seriously, Xuxi. You can’t just chuck me into oblivion.” 

“I wish he would,” said Yanxi. “Then I can get your room. I’m tired of sharing with Xuxi. He’s so noisy and then has the audacity to call himself quiet.”

“I’m right here,” Xuxi stated. His grip on Sicheng faltered for only a moment. “Step on my hands.”

“What?” Sicheng gasped. “That’s even more unstable. How are you going to throw me like that?” At least he knew where Xuxi was trying to aim now. There was another outcropping of rock farther up the wall. So high that his flashlight barely put a shadow behind it. “Where’s mom and dad when you need them?”

He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Xuxi said, calmly, “We have each other.”

“Unfortunately,” Yanxi quipped.

Sicheng put one foot in Xuxi’s left hand, the other foot in Xuxi’s right. With wicked strength, Xuxi lifted him up even higher. Farther above his head. Sicheng’s heart attempted to break out of his chest. “If I don’t make it, tell Kun that he actually _ is _ cute.”

Xuxi gasped like he’d just discovered the secret of the universe. “You told me you didn’t like him! You told me you hated it whenever he came around to the antique shop!”

“Yes. I did. I think I would know that,” Sicheng grunted. 

“I don’t see why you like him,” whined Yanxi. “He’s kind of short. He doesn’t take very good care of his hair. He eats all of the cookies when he comes over.”

“And isn’t he the professor’s grandson,” Xuxi questioned. “The same old, dusty archaeology professor who our parents used to study under? The same one who--”

“The same one who stole the credit for most of our parents’s early work, yes.” Sicheng hated to be reminded. “But that’s Kun’s grandfather. Not Kun. Kun isn’t into archaeology at all and probably only cares about it because he likes me so much.” Sicheng would appreciate it if Xuxi would concentrate and stop wobbling underneath him. His entire arm was going to wind up scratched off by the rocky surface if Xuxi threw him sideways. “It’s just that… he’s persistent. And I actually miss him when he doesn’t stop by the shop to bug me. And he can actually tell the difference between an original and a counterfeit without me having to say anything now. And I actually regret turning him down for frozen yogurt last--”

Xuxi threw him.

Sicheng wasn’t ready. He hadn’t been prepared! “Wait,” he screeched about three seconds too late. His right arm scraped against the rock. He yelled in pain but sucked the rest of the noise back down his throat. As he’d predicted, Xuxi had tossed him sideways. He was coming up on the ledge extremely short. Pain shot up his chest as he collided with the ledge. Then pain crawled up his arms as he scrambled to catch himself. “Xuxi,” he reprimanded. He couldn’t even scream all of the expletives that he wanted to because all of his breath had to go to hauling himself up onto the ledge. All of his muscles were sore and shaking now.

“You still in one piece up there,” Yanxi asked. “If you’re broken in any way, we’re taking you to the hospital and then I’m clearing out your room and claiming it as my own.”

“I will flood it first,” Sicheng shot back, spitting saliva out of his mouth and into the cold, quiet darkness around them.

“Ahh, like how Dong Zhuo set fire to Luoyang just so that the coalition couldn’t have the capital in one piece.”

It was Xuxi, oddly, who got them back on task. “Stretch out your leg again, Sicheng.”

“What? Really?”

“It worked the first time,” Xuxi announced.

It had been risky even then and only worked due to pure luck! Sicheng was about to protest such a foolish decision when he spotted a blur of movement flying right towards him. Sicheng angrily yelled, “Xuxi!” He risked his balance and his position on the rock outcropping to stretch out his right leg. With an excited yelp, Yanxi came barreling out of the shadows and clamped down on Sicheng’s leg. “Xuxi, did you just _ throw _ our brother?” He couldn’t even stay mad. His brother’s weight caught up with him and he gasped in pain as his muscles burned from the added weight.

“You caught him, didn’t you,” Xuxi’s voice floated up to them from below.

“But what if I hadn’t,” Sicheng worried. Honestly, if he had _ blinked _, he wouldn’t have seen Yanxi coming. “Gah!” He had to bend his left leg and turn his hips to maintain his balance as Yanxi swung from his leg, kilometers above the absolute nothingness beneath them.

“That was fun,” Yanxi squealed with delight.

Sicheng saw stars bounce behind his eyelids from the pain. “Hurry up,” he told his kid brother. “Climb up before we both go sliding.”

Yanxi obeyed without a sarcastic comment. For once. Perhaps he was just starting to understand how perilous of a situation they were in. But then... “This is like that one time in France where we were scaling the walls of Notre Dame to steal… err,_ acquire _ some priceless holy relics and the carabiner gave out so we had to cling to each other to avoid falling onto the pulpit.”

“You. Climb. Now.” Sicheng grunted out. He didn’t need to be given a play-by-play of something that had happened not even six weeks ago.

Yanxi continued climbing, not caring that he kicked his brother in the ribs once, in the face at least twice and then pulled on his hair really hard in his clumsy attempt to climb over him and make it onto the outcrop.

“Is the key still safe,” Sicheng asked, wiping sweat from his brow. As soon as they were back home, he was scheduling himself for a massage. And… maybe a date with Kun.

“Yeah, the key is still safe.” Yanxi pointed over his shoulder to where he had used his windbreaker to tie the long, wooden cylinder to his back like it was a baby in a sling.

“My turn!”

It was the only warning Sicheng got before an even greater weight came out of the darkness and clamped onto his leg. Sicheng screamed from the strain.

Xuxi hollered in excitement as he went swinging one way and then the other like a clock’s pendulum. “Sicheng, you’re the best!”

“Get up here before you pop my leg out of its socket.” Sicheng reached out his right hand. He could feel Yanxi holding onto him from the left but, really, his kid brother wouldn’t be able to hold them steady if they started slipping and sliding. “Climb up. Climb up, you fool.”

Xuxi unwrapped an arm from around Sicheng’s leg and both brothers screamed as he slipped.

“Don’t look down,” Sicheng warned him, even though he was looking down himself. His flashlight wasn’t even bright enough to reveal how far down the pit beneath them went.

Xuxi had to swing to the left, to the right, back to the left and then to the right again to gain enough momentum to reach up and grab Sicheng’s hand. 

Sicheng was really feeling the burn of all of this activity in his legs now. He wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up tomorrow with his entire body littered in fresh bruises and scrapes.

“I know how you feel now,” Xuxi admitted. “When I was in the air, all I could think about was how I haven’t asked out--”

“I can’t pull you up,” Sicheng hissed. He was completely red in the face. “Grab the ledge yourself.”

Xuxi’s shoes found the bare minimum of a foothold in the rocky surface but it was enough to allow him to push himself up the last little bit he needed to grab the rock outcropping with one hand and then the other.

Freed of all of Xuxi’s weight, Sicheng screamed in relief but then screamed in terror as the mechanism spun up a third time, tilting and shifting the ground beneath them. “Get up here,” he yelled at his brother.

Xuxi let out a guttural cry and then hauled himself up onto the rock outcropping, smushing Sicheng against the cold stone until he could crawl sideways to stand up on his own.

“We will be entirely vertical soon,” Yanxi reminded them. “Throwing each other and swinging around probably won’t help too much with gravity fighting against us like that.”

“There won’t be anything left of me if we have to keep going much longer.” Sicheng looked up. The top edge of the tilting floor was actually in sight. Beyond it, he knew, was the door and beyond _ it _, he hoped, was their goal. All of the treasure that they could carry. And more. “Are we sure this is the right way?” He hadn’t realized his doubts were that close to the surface.

“It’s either up here or… down there,” Xuxi exhaled. His hair was damp with sweat and he brushed it out of his face with the back of his gloved hand. If even Xuxi was reaching the limits of his stamina, then they were in for it if things dragged on for much longer.

“The Ghost Queen was obsessed with appearances,” Yanxi provided. He, at least, still seemed to be bristling with youthful energy. “She only wore the finest silks. Only used the rarest dyes. Kept only the most ferocious warriors at her palace for protection. She only had facially disfigured handmaidens attend to her so that she would always be the most conventionally attractive woman in the room. She made the eunuchs bow on their elbows and knees in front of her throne so that she could walk on their backs to her chambers so as not to dirty her shoes. I personally feel like, even in death, she would never lower herself.”

“I can’t tell if you’re ten or ten hundred,” Sicheng huffed.

“Ten hundred? Don’t you mean a thousand?” Yanxi wondered, innocently batting his eyelashes.

“It’s a shame, then,” Xuxi mumbled, “that she was practically erased from history after losing that battle against Cao Pi’s forces.”

“She would have hated to fall so far,” Yanxi agreed.

By then, the floor had finished its set of movements. The constant clanking of the man-made machinery was louder now. It had to have been up above them somewhere. Extremely close. “How do you think mom and dad are doing,” Sicheng questioned. He felt guilty for not thinking too deeply of them until then.

“Probably doing better than we are,” Yanxi cut in. “I doubt mom would have messed up a simple Ole Switcheroo.” 

“Hmm, I don’t know.” Xuxi tapped a finger to his bottom lip. “Remember in South Korea when we were searching for that underwater Joseon palace and dad triggered that whirlpool? Or when mom got that physics-based puzzle in Argentina wrong and nearly collapsed a bronze statue on our heads? Or… or… in Nepal, when--”

“Let’s keep climbing.” Sicheng stopped him. “The next time this thing tilts, we will be upside down.”

“If only we had dad’s grappling hook…” Xuxi grabbed Sicheng by the waist and lifted him up into the air with a grunt. “Stand on my hands. I’m not going to throw you this time.” After a bit of awkward repositioning, Sicheng had his shoes on Xuxi’s palms. The giant of a man sucked in a deep breath and then boosted Sicheng straight up.

“Oh,” Sicheng gasped out. He had enough of his wits about him to jump up, even higher, and grab the top ledge of the tilting floor with both hands. He was at his limits, though. Sweat dripped off his forehead and into his eyes, nearly blinding him. He could taste nothing but the salt of his sweat on his tongue and his muscles were so locked up, he wasn’t even sure if he could bend his arms. 

But he had to push through. His brothers were counting on him now. His parents would be counting on him later. With a war cry, he bent his elbows, dug his shoes into the rock and pushed himself higher higher higher until he could hook his arms across the top of the tilting floor and catch his breath.

He wasn’t surprised at all to see the complicated series of ropes and wooden wheels and weights and pulleys. The tilting floor didn’t so much tilt as it did _ drop _. He could only see a little bit with the limited illumination from his flashlight, but he had a feeling that the next time the mechanism moved would be its last. It was designed to dump the entire tilting floor down over the edge of the cliff. 

“You good,” Xuxi asked from below him. “Yanxi’s coming up.”

“Hurry,” Sicheng urged. He had been counting the seconds between movements up until now and, if he was timing this right, they had less than half a minute before they met their doom. Honestly, he would have preferred a barrage of poison blow darts to all of this lunacy.

With Xuxi’s help, Yanxi was able to reach high enough up to grab Sicheng by the ankles.

This time, Sicheng didn’t grunt in pain. He was too busy staring at the cylindrical iron weights of the mechanism as they slowly pulled on the ropes, turning wheels and gears, twisting wooden poles into new wheels and gears. They really only had seconds here. “What about you, Yanxi,” Sicheng asked, more to keep his genius brother from figuring things out than anything else. “Anything you really want to do after all of this? Anyone you really want to see?” 

“Well…” Yanxi grabbed a fistful of Sicheng’s shirt collar for leverage as he swung a foot onto his oldest brother’s shoulder. It nearly choked Sicheng but, for once, he didn’t complain. “Dad still hasn’t bought that new Fire Emblem game for me, yet.”

From down below, Xuxi laughed and clapped his hands in amusement. 

“Do you see that wooden wheel over there,” Sicheng wheezed out as Yanxi clambered up onto the top ledge of the wall. He was small enough to balance on the very tip top, his shoes so close to Sicheng’s face, their blinking lights were blinding. “Hop across. You can do it. It’s close enough.”

“Ahh, I see,” Yanxi said in a serious tone. Knowing him, he’d probably figured out how the mechanism worked already. He did not hesitate. He simply bent at the knees and leaped with all of his little kid strength across the gap between the tilting floor and the wooden wheel.

Sicheng couldn’t watch. He shut his eyes. Not because it looked like Yanxi was coming up short on his jump but because he suddenly had Xuxi’s entire weight dragging at his legs.

“I’m going to put the key in the door,” Yanxi said cheerily. “Perhaps the door opening will stop the mechanism before everything goes toppling into the darkness.” 

“What? You can’t do that. There’s so many--”

Sicheng’s complaints went ignored. Yanxi was already hopping and skipping and jumping his way across the wood and stone and rope of the ancient mechanism, running straight towards the huge stone door that had started this whole mess.

Fortunately, Xuxi was far more athletic than their little brother. His long limbs had him up on the ledge above Sicheng’s head before the fire of the strain had entirely registered in Sicheng’s muscles. “Alright, get on up here.” Xuxi was already grabbing Sicheng by his armpits and lifting him up like he weighed nothing.

Beneath them, the tilting floor was beginning to shake and whine and move with far more force than before. There was a short second of hesitation and then a tremendous jolt as part of the mechanism gave way beneath the hanging weight of the floor.

“Go, go, go,” Xuxi commanded. 

The two older brothers moved in tandem. They leaped off of the edge right as the floor fell from beneath them. They couldn’t stop moving. Ropes were being pulled taut. Iron weights were swinging dangerously. The wooden wheel they stood on creaked noisily and then turned counterclockwise like a key in a door.

Xuxi and Sicheng started running. They hopped from the wooden wheel, to a small wooden platform where a coil of rope made a hissing noise of friction before falling the rest of the way over the edge, dragging a group of weights with it. The faster they ran, the faster the contraption fell apart underneath their shoes, it seemed.

Ahead of them, Yanxi untied his windbreaker from around his torso, nearly dropped the wooden key into the void below in his haste to get it unraveled and then slammed it into the circular opening in the stone door. With more strength than Sicheng thought he had in him, Yanxi spun the large, cylindrical key to the right. There was a bit of resistance, as if all of the important bits were rotted from disuse, but then the key tumbled home with a thunderous clack and the door fell down from top to bottom into a slot in the floor. “Xuxi,” Yanxi screamed in panic. “Sicheng!” He faced them and opened his arms wide as if he were capable of catching them.

His brothers were on the way. They made the last jump, leaping into the air right as the tilting floor completely collapsed over the edge of the cliff in a plume of foul-smelling dust. All three brothers went tumbling and rolling through the open door, kicking up dirt as they fell.

Coughing and sputtering, Sicheng sat up first when he realized they had stopped rolling.

As expected, they had made it to the tomb. The sarcophagus, so white and clear that it looked made from glass, sat in the middle of the narrow, dusty room. On every inch of available floor, there were treasures and trinkets. Statues. Decorative shields. Magnificently forged swords. There were cases of jewelry and wooden crates full of dusty yet still glittering gold coins.

“Hold on,” Xuxi said, standing up on wobbly feet. “The sarcophagus. It’s open.”

He didn’t even have to point.

The lid of the old, glass-like coffin had indeed been shoved open and Sicheng stood up and dared to get close enough to spot the ratty, bloated corpse of the Ghost Queen inside.

“You’re late, boys,” came a familiar voice.

The three of them looked up.

Their parents were standing off to the left, already in the process of filling duffel bag after duffel bag with priceless ancient treasures and jewels.

“Sorry boys,” their mom said, not looking sorry at all. “Looks like you all will be handling dinner for a week.”

Yanxi looked up. “I thought you said it would be for a month?”

Sicheng elbowed him in the side.

“We were wondering when you’d show up,” said their dad. “Then we heard all of that commotion on the other side of the wall and figured it had to be you all.”

Their mother shoved a beautiful jeweled hairpin into the pocket of her jacket and then looked up at them with a wide, beaming smile. She held up a crown in her hand. “She was holding this,” she said. “This was what apparently let her craft soldiers from nothing but ash and paper.”

“Sand and bone,” Yanxi corrected, waddling over to a crate to start loading up his own bag with treasures to steal… err, _ acquire _, and then sell at their ‘antique’ shop. “The warriors were made of sand and bone. She started off as a bandit from the mountains. She probably wouldn’t have had access to paper.”

“I wouldn’t eat any of that, Xuxi,” their father said, slapping his big hands on Xuxi’s big back. Then he turned to look at Sicheng. “Don’t look so disappointed, Sicheng. We’ve raided another tomb.”

Sicheng folded his arms across his chest. “There won’t be any left for me to rob in the future if we keep knocking them out at the rate we’re going.”

“Hey now,” their mom corrected. “We don’t steal. We… authenticate.”

That at least got a laugh out of Sicheng. “By how much did you beat us?”

Their dad pointed to a hole in the low ceiling, probably where their parents had dropped through to get here. “Hmmm…. I’d say about an hour. We’ve been packing up quite a bit.” He turned to his wife and kissed her on the cheek. “Happy anniversary, love.”

“A whole hour,” Sicheng repeated lamely. He couldn’t even wrap his head around the idea that his parents had gotten so far ahead.

“See,” Yanxi huffed. “I should have been the one to lead the way through the maze. I would have come up with a far more optimal method of taking note of which turns we had already made, which doorways we had already gone through.”

Xuxi slung an arm over Sicheng’s shoulder and shook him. “Come on, Sicheng” he cooed. “It’s still a win-win situation. I’ll help you pick out something pretty for your Kun boy.”

Sicheng’s face turned red with embarrassment but that didn’t stop him from looking off to his right, gasping and thinking that Kun would look really really nice in that jade necklace over there.

**Author's Note:**

> @[Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


End file.
